Today's Conversation

In this podcast, you’ll hear Matthew Soerens and NAE President Leith Anderson discuss their recent trip to the U.S./Mexico border and: Why so many people are leaving their countries to come to the United States; What leaders agree on regarding a solution to the crisis; How churches and nonprofits are ministering along the border; and ...

Our nation has been gripped by images and stories from the U.S./Mexico border. We have heard statistics, opinions and countless messages about the tens of thousands who are trying to cross the border into the United States each month. Many of us feel helpless and don't know what can or should be done. Matthew Soerens joins Today's Conversation to clarify what's going on at the border and how Christians can make a difference.

In this podcast, you'll hear Matthew Soerens and NAE President Leith Anderson discuss their recent trip to the U.S./Mexico border and:

Why so many people are leaving their countries to come to the United States;

What leaders agree on regarding a solution to the crisis;

How churches and nonprofits are ministering along the border; and

What churches thousands of miles away can do.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: How is today’s situation at the border unique in a place where there’s long been migration?

Matt: I think the single biggest factor that makes this different is so many children. Close to half of the people who have arrived in the past few months have been children. And we can’t treat a 6-year-old or a 10-year-old the same way we would treat a 25-year-old or 40-year-old. Of course, I think any of us would agree that children don’t make the decision to come in the first place, and the reasons that they’re coming are also somewhat distinct.

I’m sympathetic to someone coming and fleeing poverty for a better life. That was my ancestors’ story to come to the United States. But, many people coming are expressing a fear of violence and persecution, which is consistent with very high rates of gang violence in particular and of homicide in those particular countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. A lot of the individuals coming — not all, some are just saying, “I’m fleeing poverty” — but many of them would tell you, if you asked why they’re coming, a pretty horrific story of fleeing violence and trying to protect their families from being killed, or raped, or otherwise harmed.

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Relevant Links/Resources

Inhumane Conditions for Migrant Children Are Unacceptable — Letter to the president, vice president and members of Congress, June 27, 2019

Immigration 2019 — NAE resolution on immigration

Evangelical Immigration Table

World Relief

In this podcast, Dr. Lindsay Stokes, an emergency medicine physician in Albany, New York, explains: Her experiences in the emergency room with those who are addicted to opioids; Why opioid addiction became so prevalent in the U.S.; How to identify an opioid overdose and provide life-saving help; What churches can do for those impacted by ...

Almost every day we hear a news story about opioid addiction in America. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that over 2 million people in the United States are currently addicted to prescription opioids. In Today's Conversation, Leith Anderson talks with Dr. Lindsay Stokes about the opioid crisis and how churches and Christians can respond.

In this podcast, Dr. Lindsay Stokes, an emergency medicine physician in Albany, New York, explains:

Her experiences in the emergency room with those who are addicted to opioids;

Why opioid addiction became so prevalent in the U.S.;

How to identify an opioid overdose and provide life-saving help;

What churches can do for those impacted by opioid addiction; and

How her faith impacts her work as an ER doctor.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: What’s the history of this? In terms of opioids, we’ve had opium. We’ve had morphine around for generations. Are these opioids new to this generation?

Lindsay: We have some new opiates. But you’re right: Opioid addiction has been around essentially since man discovered the poppy plant, which was around 3400 B.C. It was the Samarians; they called it the joy plant. So, this is definitely not new. Morphine, which is one of the most common medications that I use in my practice, has been around since the 18th century. And these medications have always been highly addictive, and they remain so.

The opioid crisis that we have today really started in the 1990s, because we started seeing prescription opioids being pushed by pharmaceutical companies who were reassuring the medical community that patients would not become addicted to these. These were things like oxycodone and hydrocodone, which came into their own in the 1990s. So that’s when we started to see addiction to the prescription opioids at very high rates.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the number of deaths from prescription opioid overdoses were rising every year, and those medications were becoming more and more prevalent in medical practice. Then in 2010, once it had become very apparent that the oxycodone and hydrocodone were much more addictive than we had been led to believe, we started changing things about how we prescribed those medications, and we put laws into effect to essentially address this problem that we had created. At that time though, the people who were already addicted to prescription opioids had to turn to something that was more readily available, which was heroin. So in 2010, we saw this spike in addictions to heroin and a spike in deaths to heroin.

Unfortunately, right now we’re in the third phase of this, which is the arrival of fentanyl and carfentanil on the scene. Fentanyl and carfentanil are both synthetic opioids, which can be created either legitimately — we use fentanyl in the hospital — or, more frequently, they can be created illegitimately and are used to cut into heroin to make it more potent, so it sells better. Because they are such potent drugs, those lead to a lot more deaths and that’s what we’re seeing right now. So the spikes that we’ve seen just in the last two to three years in opiate overdose deaths have been primarily due to the fentanyl and carfentanil and other synthetic opioids that are now being introduced into our society.

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Philip Ryken joins NAE President Leith Anderson in Today’s Conversation to share lessons learned and offer advice from his experience. In this podcast, you’ll hear: How past controversies can put you in a stronger position for the next one; What guidance Dr. Ryken finds in Scripture for dealing with controversies; When and how to talk ...

Controversies are often the things you want to leave in the past. That's why this conversation with Philip Ryken is so unique. He served as senior pastor of the historic Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia for 10 years before joining Wheaton College as its president in 2010. As a high-profile leader for the past 20+ years, he has navigated many controversies.

Philip Ryken joins NAE President Leith Anderson in Today's Conversation to share lessons learned and offer advice from his experience. In this podcast, you'll hear:

How past controversies can put you in a stronger position for the next one;

What guidance Dr. Ryken finds in Scripture for dealing with controversies;

When and how to talk with the media; and

How to stay on mission when controversies seem to take over.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: Suppose that you’re in front of a [writing] workshop, and somebody says to you, “Ok, I’ve heard all this and this is great, but what’s the number one piece of advice?” How would you answer a question like that?

Leith: Some situations escalate very quickly and with the escalation, the breadth increases. So, you’re dealing with something that’s a few people, and suddenly it’s campus-wide, or it goes to the media and it could be countrywide. And people want all kinds of information from you. And maybe it’s information that you’d really like to give them, because if they could get that information, they would get what you’re trying to say except you can’t tell them — I think particularly of personnel issues. So, now you have the information that they can’t have. What do you do in a situation like that?

Philip: It’s really tough. You know enough about these things to know how important that question is. I’ve got a lot of thoughts about this, because I’ve had to deal with a lot of situations like this. For one thing, there is a value to transparency, to openness. I think those are important values. I think we can point to things in the Scripture that point in that direction. But there is also a place for discretion. That’s an important virtue. Sometimes privacy is not only a virtue but an important right.

If you’re on the outside of leadership roles and haven’t been in significant leadership roles, it’s easy to think that transparency is the only thing that matters, and it’s also really easy to assume: “The reason they’re not telling us more is because they have something to hide.” I think that’s a natural default impulse.

I’ve been in so many situation where in some ways it would be much more convenient to violate something legally or to do something that’s actually not in keeping with important policies just because you feel if people really knew what was going on behind this — if they really knew what had happened — they wouldn’t be coming after me this way or they wouldn’t be criticizing the institution this way. That’s a very common occurrence … .

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In this podcast, you’ll hear from Margaret, a best-selling author and food enthusiast, on: Why God is the “original foodie”; How researching food changed the way she thinks about God; What the Bible teaches about the dark side of our relationship to food; and Where she gets inspiration for her writing. Read a Portion of ...

Popular author, speaker and Bible teacher Margaret Feinberg went on a unique journey — including fishing on the Sea of Galilee, descending 400 feet into a salt mine, and harvesting olives in Croatia — to discover God's perspective on food. In Today's Conversation podcast with NAE President Leith Anderson, Margaret offers a fresh perspective on food in the Bible.

In this podcast, you'll hear from Margaret, a best-selling author and food enthusiast, on:

Why God is the "original foodie";

How researching food changed the way she thinks about God;

What the Bible teaches about the dark side of our relationship to food; and

Where she gets inspiration for her writing.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: Suppose that you’re in front of a [writing] workshop, and somebody says to you, “Ok, I’ve heard all this and this is great, but what’s the number one piece of advice?” How would you answer a question like that?

Margaret: My number one piece of advice [for writers] is you’ve got to not just define your audience, but you have got to know them in and out. The “who” of your writing will determine the “what” of your writing. So often we just think we have a concept, or we have an idea, or we have something that happened to us, and we write out of that. The only problem is that often, when we’re writing that, we’re writing for ourselves.

If you write for yourself, do you know how many people want to read that? It’s one — it’s just you. But when you start with a “who” perspective of “Who are you going to serve?”, “What are their needs?”, “How well do you know them?” — then that’s going to shape your content in which you can directly meet their needs and transform them.

In the Write Brilliant course — especially the online one — we get real specific. We want you to name the person. We want you to know their age, where they live, what their work is. We want you to know everything about them in a specific way, because when you can write to somebody specific and their specific needs, then all the sudden you can reach everyone. We have a process for doing this in the course, and it is amazing how it transforms people’s writing.

We believe that at its core, writing is an act of self sacrifice. You don’t do it for you. You do it in following Christ to lay down your life and find words that will empower them to become stronger Christ-followers.

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Today's Conversation is brought to you by Ashland Theological Seminary.

 

 

In this podcast, Randy and Leith discuss: How terms like “cross-cultural” and “multi-ethnic” are distinct; Whether every church should be cross-cultural; How to deal with differing cultural preferences about music, preaching and other things; and Whether there is a certain profile that helps make someone successful as a pastor of a cross-cultural church. Read a Portion ...

Randy Nabors pastored a cross-cultural church for 35 years and now works with the Presbyterian Church in America denomination to help plant churches that reflect the diversity within the new church's community. He's done a lot and seen a lot. In Today's Conversation, he joins Leith Anderson to talk about pastoring cross-cultural churches.

In this podcast, Randy and Leith discuss:

How terms like "cross-cultural" and "multi-ethnic" are distinct;

Whether every church should be cross-cultural;

How to deal with differing cultural preferences about music, preaching and other things; and

Whether there is a certain profile that helps make someone successful as a pastor of a cross-cultural church.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: Should every church seek to be multi-ethnic or cross-cultural?

Randy: If you’re in Montana somewhere, or Nebraska, or some state — if you are in an all-something neighborhood and it is completely homogeneous — then I don’t see any mandate that you have to become something different than you are. I do think African American churches are legitimate churches. I think white churches are legitimate churches. But I do think that if you are in a mixed neighborhood and you step over certain pockets of demographics in that neighborhood to only reach the kind of people you want in your church, I don’t think you’re being obedient to the Great Commission, and I think there might be some incipient racism at work there or cultural bias.

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If you enjoyed the program, please rate it on iTunes and write a brief review. That will help get the word out and raise the visibility of the show.

Relevant Links/Resources

The New City Network

"Everything You Need to Know About Pastoring" Podcast Series: Small Churches, Rural Churches & Large Churches

Are Multi-ethnic Churches the Only Way? Evangelicals magazine, Spring/Summer 2016